1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a waste processing machine and, more specifically, to a waste processing machine incorporating a rotor having multiple cutting or shredding tools pivotally mounted thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of machines have been developed to chip, cut, grind, or otherwise reduce waste products. Currently, four types of equipment are generally used for this purpose: chippers (disk and drum types), hammer mills, hogs, and shredders.
Chippers are generally constructed around a rotating disk or drum and a plurality of blades are mounted to the disk or drum. As the drum rotates, the blades sheer the product to be reduced into chips. Chippers are ideally suited to chip logs and trees as well as small brush. A significant disadvantage for chippers is that they require reasonably "clean" wood in order for the chipper knives to remain sharp. Any foreign materials such as nails, spikes, rocks, and sand will quickly dull the knife cutting edge. For this reason, chippers are not suited for reducing wood waste products such as pallets, tree stumps, and other waste products in which wood, dirt, and other foreign objects would be found.
Hammer mills are generally constructed around a rotating shaft that has a plurality of disks provided thereon. A plurality of free-swinging hammers are typically attached to the periphery of each disk. With this structure, a portion of the kinetic energy stored in the rotating disks is transferred to the wood products through the rotating hammers. The hammers strike the product in order to reduce it. A hammer mill will break up pallets, paper products, construction materials, and small tree branches. Because the swinging hammers do not use a sharp edge to cut the waste material, the hammer mill is more suited for processing "dirty" waste products. A hammer mill also has the advantage that the rotatable hammers will recoil backwardly if the hammer cannot break the material on impact. One significant problem with hammer mills is the wear of the hammers over a relatively short period of operation in reducing "dirty" products which include materials such as nails, dirt, sand, metal, and the like.
Hogs are similar to hammer mills except the hammers provided on the hogs are rigidly secured to the periphery of the rotating disks. The hog hammer assembly suffers from the disadvantage that the hammers directly mounted to the rotating disk will often be damaged when the hog hammers strike a non-grindable object.
Chippers, hammer mills, and hogs all operate at a high speed of rotation. Shredders operate at a much slower speed of rotation and therefore are more suited for processing metals and rubber products.
The waste processors known in the prior art suffer from several problems. First, none of the waste processors known in the prior art can adequately process dirty material without resulting in undue wear on the machine or frequent clogging or jamming of the machine. Another significant problem for the known processing machine is the time involved in changing the processing tools, it takes several hours to change the processing tools such as cutting knives or hammers for these machines. When this problem is coupled with the unacceptably fast wear of the processing tool, then the operating time of the machine is dramatically reduced creating an unacceptably inefficient machine.